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EMBL-EBI and the UK referendum

EMBL and its UK site, EMBL-EBI, is not directly impacted by the result of the UK referendum on EU membership.

EMBL-EBI and the UK referendum

24 Jun 2016 - 12:10

Hinxton, United Kingdom, 24 June 2016 – The UK’s referendum on membership in the EU resulted in a decision to leave the union, which has far-reaching implications for science but no direct impact on EMBL as a whole or EMBL-EBI in particular.

Iain Mattaj, Director-General of EMBL, has emphasised in his statement that the UK’s membership in EMBL is entirely separate from its membership in the EU, and that the country’s participation in our organisation will not change as a result of the referendum. EMBL has always had a number of non-EU member states, including Israel and Switzerland, and benefitted from their participation and support.

EMBL recruits excellent scientists from around the world to deliver on our scientific missions. We have clear host-site agreements in place with the UK, Germany, France and Italy that guarantee our ability to recruit internationally, and these agreements remain in place.

In the coming months we will participate in important, complex discussions about the impact of the referendum on science, technology and engineering. We will work with our colleagues in EMBL, with EMBL Council and with the UK Government to ensure we continue to deliver the best bioinformatics services and computational biology research to Europe and the global scientific community.

Science is fundamentally international, and knowledge does not stop at borders. We are confident that EMBL-EBI will continue to deliver on its mandate: to provide freely available bioinformatics services, perform computational biology research, train the next generation of data scientists and disseminate cutting-edge technologies to industry. We will also continue to be an active participant in ELIXIR, the research infrastructure for biological information.